


Come Find Me At The End Of The World

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: After The World Ends [1]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Autistic Cooper, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, Reunions, Sharing a Bed, Whump (kinda), actually idk if this is enough to count for whump, previous use of WMDs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Harry still speaks to people. The first thing he says is always the same five words while holding out a photocopy of Andy’s original sketch from back when this all started: “Have you seen this man?”The answer is always no.
Relationships: Dale Cooper/Harry Truman
Series: After The World Ends [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924501
Comments: 20
Kudos: 43





	Come Find Me At The End Of The World

**Author's Note:**

> Despite being technically in an apocalypse setting and having mentions of injuries caused by the use of chemical and nuclear weapons, this fic is actually not super ugly. In fact I keep feeling like I should've made it uglier than it is.

It’s weird how when the world ends, even the small rules no longer apply.

Nobody says “hello” anymore to each other. A critical eye, maybe a grunt. Friends slap each other’s shoulders, backs, upper arms. Mostly people won’t get near each other. Everyone’s scared: is he sick? Maybe he’s covered in chemicals. Maybe he’s radioactive. Go away. Don’t touch me…

Harry still speaks to people. The first thing he says is always the same five words while holding out a photocopy of Andy’s original sketch from back when this all started: “Have you seen this man?”

The answer is always no.

Harry doesn’t know what he’s expecting anymore. It’s been a year and a half since Dale went back to DC and thirteen months since everything else happened. He figured maybe his friend would come back, because Twin Peaks is far away from everything, maybe it’s safer there. He’s not pessimistic enough to think Dale’s dead, though. That man is too clever and resilient to be killed so easily.

Right now, he should really be worrying about finding cold medicine for babies and toddlers. If he does run into any people, he’s got the sketch of Dale in his coat pocket. It’s not all that likely that anybody will be here, though. Not when he came in and saw how red the pine trees are about a mile off from this town - the contamination is heavy in this area. He wishes he had an actual Geiger counter but the town’s civil defense office only had one and it finally gave up and died a few weeks ago. So now he just has to run in and risk it, wearing rain gear and kitchen gloves closed up with a few precious strips of duct tape. He does have an actual gas mask, at least. Which is really good because people who wander around without masks tend to cough up blood and then die.

Vegetable oil - a crucial resource. It can feed the diesel truck he fixed up, and that gets tossed into his pack. A road flare. A roll of duct tape to replace what’s holding together his haphazard protective clothing. This is a great haul, actually, but not what he’s looking for. A flashlight and a pack of batteries - he’s finding everything _but_ Robitussin today.

Of course, his backpack, even being one of the frame ones for long hiking trips, can only hold so much… especially since it’s carrying around the battery for his truck. He always takes the battery with him on his back, otherwise someone could come along and just swipe the damn thing. Car batteries can’t be found anymore that still hold a charge. Because of this precaution, his cargo capacity is limited.

This is the farthest he’s ever gotten from Twin Peaks on a scavenging run. He stockpiled vegetable oil for weeks, hoarding it in his house without telling anyone that he had it, because he figured the same short radius that he usually travels won’t help anybody. He’s kinda hoping, no matter how dumb it is, that maybe being out on the highway, he’ll run into someone who has seen Dale, who can tell him that Dale is already going that way and Harry just missed him…

He sighs into his mask. He knows he’s an idiot.

Hawk helped him get this truck in order - the spare tire lives in the bed instead of underneath, because where the spare would usually go now has a metal crate bolted to the frame where he can stow salvage because most people won’t think to look there. They’d search the cab, the glove box. Harry hikes back out to the woods and deposits the contents of his backpack, then shuts the crate and goes back into town, still with the battery and a deer rifle weighing him down.

The drugstore was a bust. He’ll have to actually check houses, which is weird and dangerous. He still hasn’t stopped feeling like he’s robbing someone’s home even though he knows it’s necessary and important. Crossing the street, as he passes by one of the highway signs movement catches his eyes - people?

Looking, it’s definitely people. But these aren’t the kind of people he wants to see. Two reasonably tall figures, obviously men, in military MOPP suits with fancy NBC respirators. One holds a scoped M-16 and the other has a Geiger counter. Both of them have stopped moving and he knows they’re watching him.

Harry does not trust any former army to be even this close to where he lives, just outside Spokane and an over two hour drive (to say nothing of how long the walk would be) to Twin Peaks. But they know he’s here, he has no choice. He puts his hands up and waits. Maybe they’ll kill him. He’s been shot at by guys like them before.

They don’t shoot. The guy holding the assault rifle lets go with one hand, cautiously waves him closer. Harry walks up, slowly reaching into the pocket on his rubber coat to pull out the battered paper.

And like always - “Have you seen this man?” He hands it over. “I’ve been trying to find him, I figured he might be headed this way. Have you seen him?”

The one with the rifle takes it and looks for way longer than most people do. Maybe he just feels awkward - Harry’s gas mask isn’t anything fancy, there’s no voice diaphragm so he has to scream through it to be heard.

Very gradually, the eyes under the lenses point back up to him, staring into his visor.

“Harry… is that _you?_ ”

It’s him. He’s _here._ And Harry just found him, completely by accident.

Dale drops the rifle right there and they grab each other for the tightest possible hug. Harry’s mask digs into Dale’s shoulder while also pressing hard against his face, and Dale is shivering a little bit, but it feels so good. And such dumb luck to just bump into each other like this, Harry almost can’t believe it’s really happening this way.

“As heartwarming as this is, can we please _not_ keep hanging around in a hot-spot?” gripes a voice that can only belong to Albert.

“What are you reading?” Dale asks.

“Twelve roentgen, we need to go.”

They reluctantly pull away from each other.

“I thought anything less than fifty isn’t a big deal,” Harry says.

“Whoever told you that is an idiot,” Albert snaps. “We’re cooking like eggs right now.”

“Okay… c’mon, I have a truck about a mile up.”

Harry and Dale squish together again, walking down the road with their arms around each other’s shoulders after Dale scooped his gun back up.

“You’ve been waiting for me the entire time?”

“Yeah, anytime I saw somebody I would show them the picture and ask.”

“How did you know I would come here?”

“Well… we didn’t get hit as bad as some other places, I thought maybe you’d know that somehow. Mostly I just hoped.”

“Harry, I have to say, I’m touched.” He can hear the smile in Dale’s voice. “Most people would’ve given up on me after such a length of time.”

“Did you really walk all this way?”

“No, but we ran out of gas in Ohio and then a progression of injuries slowed us at practically a constant rate. At one point I became ill and we were forced to stop for almost a month.”

“Well, you’re here now,” Harry says. “Better late than never.”

“Why do I have the feeling that by the time we reach this truck, you two will have found a way to kiss each other through your respirators?” Albert grumps.

“Please be patient, Albert. There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Dale answers, and it’s really hard to tell if he’s joking or not.

“Coop, why are you shaking?”

“Oh, I believe I’m severely malnourished. It’s alright, once Albert has deemed it safe to do so I’ll remove my respirator and drink some water. I also have candy in my backpack, which will help.”

“I have snacks in mine,” he offers. “You can have them while we’re driving up.”

“Snacks?”

“Yeah, uh… fish jerky, some dried berries. So you’ll really need the water, but it’s better for you than candy.”

“Harry, I’m very disappointed in you. How can you fail to supply me with donuts at a time like this?” Dale scolds, and this time it’s pretty obvious he’s kidding.

Harry laughs hysterically at that and almost has to stop walking. “Coop, I promise, if I had any donuts I’d give ’em all to you.”

“It’s not advisable for either of us to eat heavy meals anytime soon,” Albert speaks up in a serious tone. “At the very least we’d end up puking, but it could actually kill us.”

“Why?” Harry demands, alarmed.

“We’ve gone hungry for weeks now. If you have it, soup broth. Nothing heavier. Maybe milk, but I don’t expect you to have that and it’s also a heavy concentrator of cesium-137.”

“No, we don’t have milk. There’s no cows in Twin Peaks. We’ve got clean water, and mostly forestry. So fishing, hunting, gathering up fruit. Once in awhile, Hawk’s gotten us some honey, he always comes back with about a hundred stings though. And I have chickens, so we’ve got eggs. There’s a couple vegetable gardens. But most’a the town evacuated. I don’t know where the hell they thought they were going, but nobody’s come back yet. There’s maybe a hundred of us or so, a few people died. Actually… Albert, how much do you know about medicine?”

“I’m a coroner,” Albert reminds him sourly.

“Right. Well… Doc Hayward passed a few months ago. So we kinda need you if you’re willing to stick around.”

“What did he die of?”

“Nobody knows. He just didn’t wake up one morning.”

“Was it contagious?”

“Not as far as I know. There’s about twelve people right now who’re sick, but it’s all radiation symptoms. Except Lucy and Andy’s baby, he has a cold. Actually I was out looking for cough medicine when you ran into me.”

It’s a long walk to the truck, mostly because Dale and Albert are a lot slower than Harry. Now that he’s paying attention, he can really tell that they’re hungry, because they’re both stumbling and slouching and Dale is almost hanging off his shoulders. He tries to distract them by talking about what it’ll be like once they get there - how food rationing works, hot water for bathing is only doled out once a week, chores, the scavenging schedule. Dale is delighted and asks tons of questions despite how tired his voice sounds, while Albert just grunts most of the time to show that he’s still listening.

Harry actually has to help Dale climb into the truck, and he’s starting to get worried that Dale’s even worse off than Albert said. Albert, meanwhile, seems to still have a little strength due to sheer spite, and gets in the cab on his own to sit in the back seat with the rifles and backpacks. Harry hooks up the battery under the hood and takes his spot behind the wheel, making sure to check that he’s still in four so that he can get out of the woods and back onto the road before putting it in drive.

“This is indescribably nice,” Dale comments wearily from the passenger seat.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve almost forgotten…” And then he falls asleep, still in his mask and suit with his head resting on the window.

“Still alive back there, Albert?”

“Despite the world’s best efforts.”

“How’d you guys get such nice hazmat gear?”

“We were part of a government agency, it wasn’t that hard.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So you wanna eat or bathe first once you’re back?”

“I don’t honestly care so long as they both happen within short order of each other.”

“Alright, food first, it’ll give us time to warm up the bathwater for you,” Harry chuckles.

“Wake both of us up every few minutes,” Albert orders.

“Okay, but why?”

“A specific amount of inward pressure is needed to open the valve behind the filters on our respirators. When you sleep, you don’t breathe deeply enough to open them most of the time. So if you sleep wearing one for long enough you’ll asphyxiate.”

“Okay, I’ll do that then,” he promises.

The drive back is quiet, but Harry’s in the best mood he’s been in since… well, since the world ended. Thank god he picked a spot on the highway to be looking for cough syrup this afternoon, if he’d been out in the backwoods somewhere he would’ve missed them and they’d still be walking endlessly without food. He wakes both of them up every so often just like he said he would, and finally, _finally,_ he’s safely delivering Dale and Albert home to Twin Peaks.

“Okay, we’ll get dusted off and drop the salvage, then head to the station.”

“Does everyone stay there?” Dale wonders.

“No, that’s where supplies get distributed from. So we’ll go there to get some food and a drum of water for you guys to clean up with.”

This ends up being kind of an ordeal. Dale, having lost all his momentum from riding in a truck for over two hours, can barely stand up. Even Albert can’t keep up the façade anymore and is forced to accept help in getting decontaminated. All the dirt comes off with a small hand broom, then the three of them shuck their protective gear into plastic bins. Underneath the MOPP suits, the two of them are in army fatigues and boots with sweaters over top - Harry, meanwhile, is in wool pants with a flannel and hiking boots. All three of them shiver and their breaths steam in the late October air, and Harry practically carries Dale back to the truck.

It’s just starting to rain as Harry marches them into his house. He sits them on the couch while he builds a fire in the living room and opens a jar of tomato soup into a pan so he can stick it in there to heat up.

“I have applesauce, too, if you fellas think you can handle it.”

“That should be fine,” Albert yawns.

“Harry…”

“Yeah, Coop.”

“Can you come here for a moment?”

“Sure.”

Harry stands in front of the couch and Dale struggles to sit up and reach for him, feeling his hands and arms and chest. “I’m sorry… I’m just making sure I didn’t dream you.”

“No, I’m real,” he promises, a little baffled.

Dale nods, and between the fading light from the windows and the golden flicker of the flames Harry can really appreciate how _skeletal_ his friend actually is. Dale is dwarfed by his own clothes, the angles of his face are too sharp, his fingers are like twigs. His neck seems like it could snap under the weight of his skull and his eyes are sunk. Nearby, Albert dozes in the warmth of the fire in a similar state. They were about to starve to death if Harry hadn’t stumbled across them out there near Spokane.

“We’ll be alright,” Dale insists, grabbing Harry’s hands again in a grip that’s alarmingly weak. Harry forgot Dale can read all his thoughts in his face like that. “You look good.”

“I do?”

Harry doesn’t think he does. He has a scar from a chemical burn on his left cheek and he desperately needs a haircut.

“In the sense that you’re well fed and in a reasonable state of health,” Dale clarifies.

“Yeah, we’ve mostly done alright here.”

A tired nod. “Good. I’m glad you’re alright, Harry. I was concerned… maybe you wouldn’t be here once we’d arrived.”

Harry squeezes his hands one last time and then sits next to the fire to stir the soup, partly because he doesn’t really know what else to say. It’s been so long and so much has happened since they last spoke to each other, even longer since they sat in the same room together. But Harry’s so glad that Dale’s here, that Dale’s safe. Harry will feed him and keep him warm and he’ll get strong again in a few weeks.

Albert, being Albert, rejects any help with his meal no matter how his arms shake with the effort of holding even a small bowl of soup. Dale isn’t as proud, and lets Harry keep it balanced on the arm of the couch for him while he takes slow, careful bites. Harry will eat and take care of himself only after both of them are fed, clean and asleep. Once they’ve finished their soup he gives them bowls of applesauce, then sets pots of water to boil in the fire.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess neither of you has spare clothes at all,” Harry says while handing Albert a bath towel and a bar of soap that Hawk gave him last month, “let alone anything _clean_ to change into. So I’ll scrounge something up in a minute.”

Albert, apparently too exhausted to be snarky, just nods and disappears into the bathroom. Harry sits beside Dale on the couch and pulls him sideways for a hug; Dale totally collapses into his arms, not even bothering to try and stay upright. Even though the thick sweater and a fatigue tunic, Harry can feel that under his skin he’s just a sack of bones right now.

“I might vomit,” Dale warns him. “Albert was right earlier.”

“The soup was too heavy?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

“Don’t hold back on my account, Coop. If you need to throw up, go right ahead, I can clean it up.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to,” he complains. “It would be rude of me to waste your food, Harry.”

Harry stifles a giggle. “Don’t worry about it, we’ve got more. Hey, y’know that applesauce grew on a tree in my backyard.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm. Right next to the chicken coop. Tomorrow maybe you can swallow a couple egg yolks, you’ll get plenty of nutrients outta those and maybe they won’t be so harsh on your stomach.”

“We’ll have to check with Albert first…”

“Yeah. I’m just tryna come up with some ideas, that’s all.”

“It’s alright, Harry. I assure you that it’s appreciated.” Dale struggles to roll himself around a little - his back is on Harry’s legs and his head rests in Harry’s left elbow. He reaches a trembling hand up and touches the cheek that doesn’t have the mark of blister agent exposure on it. “I would like, in general, to be sure that I have enough time to explain several things to you that I wasn’t able to say until now.”

“You do, you’ve got plenty of time. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you.”

“Harry, would you like to hear something that’s terribly stupid on my part?”

“Go for it.”

“I miss my blue pajamas.”

Harry looks down at Dale, and then they both crack up, laughing until they can’t breathe.

“I miss my Stetson hat,” he admits. “It got poison gas all over it and had to get tossed.”

“That’s a shame, it suited you so well.”

“Well, I was in Seattle, Frank was supposed to meet me somewhere else but he never showed up. I figured maybe he went there, there was a FEMA shelter or an evac center or something and… well, that’s how _this_ happened.” He taps the scar on his face. “I’m real lucky it was just a few spots, too. It could’a been so much worse. I came back home and spent weeks covered in wet bandages.”

“Albert and I were in a government blast shelter,” Dale comments. “I have some amount of guilt about this… the warning didn’t come in time for most of the people who would’ve otherwise occupied it with us. There were only five others. Eventually the food ran out, even though the radioactivity hadn’t decreased to a safe level at the entrance. We were there for three months total and it took some time to find a functional vehicle.”

“How didn’t you get killed by the radiation? I _know_ DC got hit hardest.”

“Albert’s survey meter came from the blast shelter, we were able to find less dangerous routes. If the level was too high, we’d run. Ultimately we were both suffering from acute radiation syndrome for some time after we left the shelter, but we kept moving in spite of it. At some point the condition returned for me, but not for him. He determined that I’d drank contaminated water… and at that point we were forced to stop.”

“Are you still sick?”

“No, this was quite awhile ago.”

“Okay. That’s good.”

“I’m not ill at the moment, Harry, just undernourished.”

“Well, I’m gonna do everything I can to fix that.”

After a few more minutes he sits Dale back up in the corner of the couch and then goes to find clothes for his two houseguests to sleep in. Almost the second after he’s done that, Albert has finished bathing, so Harry hands over a set of long johns, some sweatpants, wool socks and a flannel. Without central heating, bundling and blankets are essential even with it not actually being winter yet. He has an identical pile of clothes for Dale, who manages to stagger into the bathroom but almost falls and cracks his head on the sink counter once he’s in there.

Harry really doesn’t like that, so he grabs Dale for some manhandling and what he finds while undressing his friend are things he likes even less. Individual ribs, collar bones, shoulder blades, hip bones, vertebrae - all are very easily visible. Dale almost looks like he stepped out of a picture featuring Jewish holocaust victims in 1945.

The hot water is poured, Harry puts in cold water until it’s evened out, and then he gets Dale into the tub. Cue an immediate groan.

“What, is it too hot?”

“No, it’s wonderful,” Dale grins, sinking in and closing his eyes.

“Okay, well… here.” He takes off his overshirt and hangs it on the inside doorknob and then rolls the sleeves of his thermal undershirt to his elbows. “I’ll do this, you just relax.”

“Yes,” Dale agrees, not looking.

It’s a strange intimacy, getting his friend cleaned up. They haven’t even seen each other in a year and a half, back when Dale was still in suits and Harry was town sheriff and neither of them had a single thought about the world destroying itself. Yet Dale still trusts him utterly, allows him to do this without a single complaint. But it’s also difficult for Harry, because he can see a map of suffering across Dale’s pale skin… from radiation burns to ordinary cuts, barely five inches of flesh can exist in any direction without showing some kind of scars. That road was much longer and more difficult than Dale’s been letting on and it’s a wonder he’s even still alive right now.

“How the hell were you still carrying around that rifle?” he wonders, noting the absolute lack of strength in his friend.

“With extreme difficulty. It’s unlikely I could’ve actually shot anyone by the time you encountered us.”

Harry nods even though Dale’s eyes are still closed. “Well… I’m glad it’s me you ran into.”

“So am I,” he agrees. “Albert will never admit it, but he is, too. Of course Albert also had to put up with my antics the entire time. Every so often, I would come up with something new - ‘when I find Harry, I’m going to…’ this-and-such thing. It was driving him insane.”

Harry chuckles fondly. “Hawk’s gonna have similar stories about me doing that, too.”

He finishes up by washing Dale’s hair and face, then pulls the plug out of the tub and dries off the overly-bony body. Dale still doesn’t mind needing help just to get dressed, and Harry puts his friend in his own bed and piles on the blankets.

“I’m gonna go have dinner, yell if you need anything and I’ll come running.”

A nod, and then this: “Harry, if you attempt to sleep on that terrible piece of furniture you call a couch, I _will_ find a way to punish you for it once I’ve regained even the slightest amount of strength.”

“What, you want me to lie on the floor?”

“This mattress is perfectly large enough for two people and I won’t suffer the thought of you sleeping anywhere else on my account.”

He can’t help a smile. “Okay, Coop, but you might regret that. My bath’s not for two more days and I don’t smell that great.”

“Irrelevant. You’re sleeping here with me,” Dale insists.

Harry opens a jar of venison cooked with vegetables and warms it in the dying coals of the fire in the living room, then hurries to eat it because truth be told he wants to get back to Dale. He knows he should be just as worried about Albert, but he’s not - Albert is somehow not quite as close to death and can take care of himself, at least marginally. Once his belly is full he goes through the house and hangs blankets over the windows to keep in more heat, then goes back into his bedroom and closes the door. Sleep clothes, blow out the candle on the side-table. He climbs into the sheets and pulls the blankets up… and then, he wraps around Dale from behind, spooning them together so that they’ll both be nice and warm.

Dale scoots backwards slightly and nestles right into him, obviously not protesting this at all.

“Harry… tomorrow, there’s something we should talk about…”

“Okay,” he agrees. “Tomorrow we will. Right now, you’re gonna have a good long sleep so you can soak in all the vitamins from that soup.”

“Yes, alright. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

And there’s something profoundly right about feeling Dale fall asleep in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants a continuation of this, I will probably write it, but people need to actually ask because I've been getting even less comments than usual lately.
> 
> All my Twin Peaks fics can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=127943&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Aaron_The_8th_Demon).
> 
> Comments are welcomed, encouraged, and greatly appreciated :)


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